Islam and Social Work1

Islam and Social Work: Debating Values, Transforming Practice by Sara Crabtree, Fatima Husain and Basia Spalek is divided into eight sections which provide an understanding of key Islamic concepts in different areas such as marriage, family and health. According to the authors, every social worker needs to be familiar with the aforementioned concepts whenever they are dealing with Muslim clients. Throughout the eight sections the authors define the pillars and values of Islam and shed light on the real meaning of some words which have become highly mediatized after September 11th, such as jihad, niqab, honor, women’s rights, marital violence and homosexuality.

In the introduction, the authors provide an overview of the book and their approach. The second section addressed the key concepts found in the Muslim Ummah. The third section covers social work education in Islam. The fourth section addresses gender relations and the centrality of the family while the fifth examines some of the common issues that social workers come across when working with Muslim families. The sixth section studies health issues while the seventh focuses on crime, victimization, and criminal justice in Muslim communities. In the conclusion, the authors suggest areas in which future research would prove fruitful.

Overall, the authors have succeeded in providing the reader with a simplified overview of some basic Islamic concepts. Social workers who are not familiar with Islam should not assume that they will be able to understand Muslims simply by reading this book. Any such readers should be aware that the concepts presented by the authors are far more complex than they have been presented. Furthermore, many of the interpretations provided have undergone various degrees of cultural influence. Rather than refer to the religious authorities of the Sunnis, Shi‘ites and Sufis, and instead of drawing from the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Shari‘ah, the authors appear to have relied on the interpretations of Islam made by people who have no expertise in the matter. Although it would have been beneficial for the authors to go deeper into the meaning of some concepts, this may have been impossible, and perhaps ill-advised, since the field of Islamic Studies seems to be well outside of the specialization of these social workers.

For reasons which are difficult to explain, the authors opted to use English words to convey technical Arabic terms. In so doing, however, they ended up translating terms in such a way that does not reflect their original meaning. Throughout the book, the authors refer to the “veil” (28-9, 81, 82-5) a description which is misleading. Islamic modest dress mandates that Muslim women cover their hair and their bodies, with the exception of their hands. By referring to the veil, the authors may give the impression that the only thing a Muslim woman has to cover is her hair. At the very least, the authors should simply have spoken of hijab since the term “veil” can apply to both the head-scarf or khimar and the face-veil or niqab. They should also have made an attempt to distinguish between strictly Islamic practices and pre-Islamic cultural customs.

It was as surprising as it was shocking that the authors spoke of “vengeance” as opposed to qisas (91-92). Before Islam, the Arabs had a long history of tribal warfare. With the advent of Islam, however, the Prophet Muhammad opposed vengeance between individuals and tribes and instituted the Islamic concept of qisas which is a law that regulates disputes. In pre-Islamic times, it was simply an eye for an eye. Revenge was blind. In Islam, however, it is only the murderer who can be put to death. Furthermore, Islam also distinguishes between first degree murder, second degree murder, and accidental homicide. The law of qisas is the law of equity, not the law of reciprocity, and cannot be translated as “revenge.” The authors do not take into consideration these complexities.

Most of the case studies provided in the book reflect the cultural concepts of certain families and communities as opposed to the values embodied in Islam. Thus, the very title of the book is problematic as it contradicts its contents. The book is supposed to be about Islam and social work. However, for the book to be about Islam, it needs to distinguish between Islam and culture, something which it simply does not do, for which reason it might have been best to title it Muslims and Social Work since Islam is one thing, while Muslims are another thing all together.

Besides failing to appropriately address the influence of culture on behavior, they also describe certain customs as Islamic when they simply are not. A good example of confusing Islam and culture is the phenomenon of genital mutilation which the authors describe as a sunnah (132), when it represents a pre-Islamic pagan practice of African origin which has no basis whatsoever in the Qur’an and the authentic traditions of the Prophet.

Although the authors provide some important guidelines to help social workers deal with Muslim clients, it is well-known that individuals from the same culture and religion differ greatly. Hence, you cannot apply the guidelines they have given to every single Muslim individual or family. Rather, social workers need to treat every single client as an individual.

Finally, although the publisher claims that Islam and Social Work is “the only book specifically about social work with Muslims communities,” this claim does not pass the test of a simple search engine. Although there were far fewer studies on the subject several decades ago, an enormous amount of scholarship has been published dealing specifically with social work among Muslims in English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, among other languages.

In spite of its shortcomings in both style and content, Islam and Social Work exposes social workers to a critically important subject: the difficulties faced by Muslims when attempting to integrate into Western culture while preserving their Islamic values. The work by Crabtree, Husain, and Spalek, may help expand the horizons of some social workers, help them view Muslims as ordinary human beings with hopes and aspirations as opposed to opponents or enemies of Western civilization. The authors, in particular, should be praised for presenting a more humanized image of Muslims communities, something which stands in stark contrast to the stereotypes which saturate the mass media.

• 1. This book review of Islam and Social Work: Debating Values, Transforming Practice (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2008) by S. Crabtree, F. Husain, and B. Spalek was published in The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26.3 (2009): 144-146. It was written by Rachida Bejja and edited by Dr. John Andrew Morrow.